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The Center Game is exactly as it sounds. After e4 e5, White plays d4, immediately trying to take control of the centre with their pawns. Objectively, the Center Game according to Stockfish is favourable for Black and my experience with online rapid games on chess.com at the beginner-intermediate level is that I win more than half the time when facing against this opening.

Firstly, Black should capture the d4 pawn with their e-pawn (exd4), and it’s probably bad if you don’t capture. For White, they then have a couple of choices. I’ve commonly encountered White taking back the pawn with their queen. This is entirely fine for Black as the obvious next move is developing a knight, Nc6, which also attacks the queen, so you win some tempo. If White retreats their queen back to d1, then you’ve basically won a turn, which is excellent, and is what happened in this game.

When I looked at the Lichess database of community games for lower-rated blitz and rapid games, Qd1 gives the win advantage to Black. Other queen moves are better, especially Qe3 (also known as the Paulsen Attack), and Qa4, which seems to maintain a balance in win rate.

However, rather than capturing back the pawn with the Queen, the move that continues White’s win advantage is c3 – entering the Danish Gambit. The logic is that White deflects Black’s pawn from the centre, and for the cost of two, or even three pawns, it gets a massive lead on development with open lines for all the diagonal attackers (bishops and queen), staring at Black’s kingside.

In fact, it’s probably better for Black to not accept the Danish Gambit, decline the offer of material, and immediately strike back and to try to take control of the centre!

In this game, my opponent with the White pieces who played the Center Game loss valuable tempo with retreating their queen to d1. This allowed me to basically launch a reverse scholar’s mate type attack. They misplayed the defence of their king, resulting in a catastrophic collapse in their position, starting with the loss of their queen.

Game on chess.com: https://www.chess.com/game/live/50377184365

[Event "Live Chess"]
[Site "Chess.com"]
[Date "2022.06.30"]
[Round "?"]
[White "Fema999"]
[Black "vitualis"]
[Result "0-1"]
[ECO "C22"]
[WhiteElo "1165"]
[BlackElo "1213"]
[TimeControl "1800"]
[EndTime "18:28:10 PDT"]
[Termination "vitualis won by resignation"]

1. e4 e5 2. d4 exd4 3. Qxd4 Nc6 4. Qd1 Bc5 5. c3 Qh4 6. Qf3 Ne5 7. g3 Nxf3+ 8. Nxf3 Qxe4+ 9. Be2 d5 10. Nbd2 Qf5 11. O-O Nf6 12. Re1 O-O 13. b4 Bb6 14. a4 Ng4 15. a5 Bxf2+ 16. Kg2 Bxe1 17. h3 Ne3+ 18. Kh2 0-1